102 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



down by spraying, a few wild trees ought to be a con- 

 siderable protection on the edge of a cherry orchard. 



Along such a fence as that where the cherry tree 

 stands might well be several cedars. The cedar is not a 

 common tree with us, to be sure, but it grows plentifully 

 twenty miles south in Connecticut. There the pastures 

 are studded with dark sentinels, and many an old fence 

 post is companioned by a sturdy tree or two. When the 

 blue cedar berries are ripe in the Autumn the late visi- 

 tors among the birds, such as cedar wax-wings, robins, 

 jays, and perhaps bluebirds and ruffed grouse (par- 

 tridges), find them a ready food, and find, as well, warm 

 protection from early snowstorms in the thick foliage. 

 The young cedars, too, make excellent nesting places 

 for the smaller sparrows in early summer. The foliage 

 is so dense and upstanding about the trunk that such a 

 nest is practically invisible, and one existed in our yard 

 last year, only breast-high beside a frequented garden 

 path, for many weeks before we discovered it. 



The lively goldfinch is brother to the butterflies in our 

 forsaken pasture in thistle-time. There are but few 

 thistles, and they are clustered amid wild sunflowers in 

 a fork of an old logging road by the edge of the second 

 growth a pretty colour scheme of pink and gold. It 

 seems almost as if the finches realized their own har- 

 mony with this bit of wild gardening, for they wing into 

 the bed, seeking thistle-down for their nests and starting 

 up a swarm of tiny brown butterflies which had been in- 



